Sinister Shadow Magick

Satanism is dark, and Satanists revel in evil. As a word, evil is regarded as deriving for the Gothic (via Old English) “ublis” implying “beyond” and “going beyond due limits”. Later, the word – like so many others – was re-interpreted “morally”, in the abstract terms of Nazarene fundamentalism and “evil” became a general term, applied to one’s opponents and those excesses which timed and physically ailing Nazarenes feared.

Genuine Satanists do evil, they cultivate evil: they are evil, in all senses of the term now accepted. Imitation Satanists, however, play mental and intellectual games: they enjoy the “thrill” of calling themselves Satanists. Some go further, and may revel in local notoriety, finding a vicarious pleasure in being known as a “Satanist”. But these imposters do no evil – in fact, they explain (quite often) that Satanism has been misunderstood and is really rather a “moral religion” (or something of the kind), perhaps an “ethical knowledge”. Such people are pathetic – and certainly not Satanists.

In the beginning, a genuine Satanist will cultivate evil on a personal level – by going to and thus finding his or her limits. This involves more than just going beyond the (accepted) limits imposed by society or whatever. It means experience, on the practical level, of evil and all that it implies. Later, when the Satanic novice has some experience and thus self-understanding and mastery, there is an impersonal evil. The first is Sinister Shadow Magick of the external and internal kind. The second is Sinister Shadow Magick of the Aeonic type – the manipulation, changing, of individuals and events on a not insignificant scale, that is, one which produces tangible results and often disruption/creation/evolution and thus continues the Sinister Dialectic of history. This is called “Shadow Magick” not only because it is mostly secretly done, but also because it is dangerous, physically, involving as it does acts of defiance against restrictions imposed by all other forms and individuals.

Neither of these mean a type of juvenile “rebellion” nor purely “mental” acts (achieved by ritual or naything else). They mean a directed, calculating, purposeful involvement in real life and situations: for the beginner Satanist (the novice) just as much as the Adept. What differs, is the aim – at first, it is personal, to aid self-mastery, understanding and thus build Satanic character; then it is impersonal or aeonic. Thus one image of the genuine Satanist – someone in control, seeking mastery of life; seeking more challenges and goals and insights.

Let me be explicit so I cannot be misunderstood.

1 – The Satanic novice will aspire – to what is beyond, in all things. This means personal experience, testing Destiny and achieving difficult goals in personal life. It means real danger in the real world, not cheap manufactured “thrills” of self-induced stupor and loss of control – but rather, life and liberty threatening situations. These may be and often are amoral, illegal and evil – all laws are “fundamentally an accumulation of tireless attempts to stop creative individuals making life into instants of poetry”.

Naturally, some guidance may be needed – it is easy to become lost, directionless or caught – and this is where the advice of a more experienced Satanic Adept may be useful. However, the acts of a Satanist are not random nor motiveless and neither do they arise from fulfilling Satanic Wyrd – or, viewed another way, from presencing the energies of “darkness”/Satan on the Earth with sinister intent.

An example will explicate this. A Satanic novice, having developed to a certain extent via ordeals such as Grade Rituals, the achievement of personal, physical goals and the organizing and running a Satanic Temple, desires to go further. For this, practical experience and some guidance is needed. Let us assume the novice is advised or chooses to use a political form to achieve this experience – and thus becomes involved with radical “right wing” politics because such people already possess an element or two of Satanic spirit, the “other sides” in this form and at this moment in the history of this aeon representing the Nazarene disease in another guise. Thus, she takes part in direct political actions – this is both exciting and dangerous, given the prevailing sickness of the age. Gradually she acquires practical experience “on the edge”, and hopefully some real, tangible enemies if she is performing right. These enemies hate her for her political views – and some of them may eventry to harm her physically. For they not only threaten her destiny and thus achievement, but also Satanic Wyrd, because she is by her actions is fulfilling higher, Satanic goals (in simple terms, presencing the darker forces via a tangible form). This fulfilling is expressedin the form she is guided toward or chooses for herself via a knowledge of Aeonics. On the practical level, she can and should undertake magickal rites (such as the Death Ritual) to aid her – be other means can be used, such as assassination. She may wish to do this herself or she may manipulate others into doing it. The result is the same – personal experience and development, and aeonic energies presenced via the execution of the act. Thus her own evolution, and that of the acausal or sinister, furthered.

Given the nature of the form chosen, this Satanic novice, by using such a form to the utmost of her ability (that is, seeing it as fulfilling a part of her own Destiny – conventionally, “believing the correctness of the views expoused”) goes beyond the norms of society and its herd majority and thus achieves personal knowledge of the illegal and forbidden (in that society).

2 – Beyond this, when Adeptship is attained by experiences such as the foregoing, the Satanist will try and open a nexion – to directly access acausal energies on Earth via rites such as Nine Angles etc. This is the beginning of Aeonic Shadow Magick – and involves an even greater committment to change than before, on the practical level. What form or forms this takes depends on individual wyrd, discovered by the Grade Ritual of Internal Adept and prepared for by previous rites, and experiences. It may be political, as it may be the use/manipulation of archetypical forms/images with sinister intent – or involve using a “religion” as a Satanic instrument of change. Whatever the form, the changes are supra-personal – they effect more than a few individuals. In fact, they radically disrupt existing forms and norms. For example, a political form may be chosen and used. After some time, violence, riots somewhere, the spread of a new idea…The rising of a type of State in essence inspired with sinister energies and thus contributing to aeonic evolution…Perhaps a war, to propitiate the darker forces…

Thus, it will be understood that Satanists act in a directed way, whether they are novices or Adepts. Their evil has a purpose (as Satan Himself does – as do THEY who are beyond Him have a purpose, on this Earth). The acts, and the evil, arise from a Satanic desire and understanding made real in a practical form or forms. The going beyond, the evil, are part of Satanic Wyrd – on the personal and aeonic level. I repeat – they are not directionless, motiveless acts, nor do they arise because the person doing them is somehow inadequate or weak or in the thrall of some uncontrolled desire. (The conventional description of Satanic deeds and “crime”: most so-called Satanic crimes are acts by dabblers who have no self-insight and even less self-control; the rest, results from characterless, insipid morons who are weak. Such description and such attritions arise from fundamental understanding of genuine Satanic acts.) The Satanist is controlled – knowledgeable, particularly about themselves and what Satanism means in supra-personal terms. They are part of history – participants in a Sinister Dialectic of supra-aeonic proportions, and aware of the power of the sinister to change both themselves and those forms which others through the ages have created to shape our evolution or which (like the Nazarene disease) hinder our evolution.